Qian Xun Tie

Hello!I am a student at McGill’s Faculty of Education. I enjoy interdisciplinary work, so I try to learn, draw, and teach at the same time.Lin Yihan once wrote:
_{梦想是：从书呆子变成读书人，再从读书人变成知识分子。（2017)
My dream: to grow from a bookish type into a reader, then from reader into literati.}My goal right now is to become a reader.

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Qian Xun Tie

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EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY

The national literature I grew up with often painted the figure of the teacher as a gardener and a nurturer.

Essay from my old textbook, describing the teacher as an “angel,” a “tree,” the “sea.”

Yet I often think that these metaphors find their backside in a set of others: warden, monitor, police. The school, which Michel Foucault analogizes to a prison, is a space where control is readily asserted over children. The teacher is a key paternal actor in this structure, who rewards them for compliance and punishes them for disobedience (Foucault 228). Discipline, for Foucault, is "a policy of coercions that act upon the body, a calculated manipulation of its elements, its gestures, its behavior…Thus discipline produces subjected and practiced bodies, 'docile' bodies" (Foucault 135).Such extractive measures, defended and upheld by mythos of protection, have been failed to provide the necessary resources to ensure safety and growth of those who, to different degrees, are barred from civic and political life.I then posit the metaphor of the gardener, of the police, of the seedling, and of the tree as two sides of the same coin. Both uphold the control, measuring, and domination of a child's biological and social progression into the modern human. As Sylvia Wynter shows in her Do Not Call Us Negros: How 'Multicultural' Textbooks Perpetuate Racism, dominant curriculums are founded on national fictions that simultaneously extract from and remove Blackness (Wynter p. 9). Today, Wynter's statement remains relevant as ever, inside and outside the United States.If I had relate an educational philosophy, it would be inspired by critical humanists. In my occupation, I want to try and understand how pedagogies reflect our limited understandings of human existence, which are violently projected onto children, some more than others. My teaching is imperfectly shaped by this understanding.Although, near the end of my degree I am still unsure if there is a proper way to teach, I commit myself to two actions while occupying the teaching profession:The first is to work towards literacy. Through a variety of mediums and approaches, I hope to my best ability provide students with the material resources and conditions to access and critically/compassionately study cultural knowledge and narratives. Literacy takes place in many forms, and I attempt to incorporate a variety of forms in my teaching.The second is to use my own literacy to participate outside the classroom. Wherever I teach, I hope to gain a better understanding of the wider systems that define or impact youth. I believe that this can help me support students in their lives.I am not a fully formed teacher, nor do I really strive to be. I do dream, however, for a sensibility to imagine and to witness untethered and unrecognized forms of growth, in students and myself.WORKS CITED
Foucault, Michel, and Alan Sheridan. Discipline and Punish : The Birth of the Prison. Vintage, 2012, http://0-lib.myilibrary.com.catalogue.libraries.london.ac.uk?id=435863.Wynter, Sylvia. "Do not call us Negros: How multicultural textbooks perpetuate racism." (1992).

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Qian Xun Tie

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LEARNING HISTORY, PATTERN MAKING, AND COMMUNITY THROUGH QUILTINGView Lesson PlanIn a previous lesson, students were learning about piecing shapes together to make images and patterns. In particular, they had observed different elements of nature and pieced them together onto the back of a sea turtle.

As a means to further the student's understanding of pattern making and to situate the practice in the context of art history, I decided to base the next lesson on the theme of quilting. Quilting is a practice that directly incorporates pattern-making by manipulating shapes and textural elements. The lesson's purpose was to introduce students to the rich history behind the quilting/pattern-making tradition and to explore this practice hands-on in light of this knowledge.Quilting is a prevalent artistic practice among many cultures. This lesson focused on the importance of this tradition in Gee's Bend, Alabama.

Susan Goldman Rubin's The Quilts of Gee's Bend was used as an introduction to the lesson. I wanted the students to appreciate how the quilters of Gee's Bend utilized limited materials to make beautiful works of art. Moreover, I wanted the students to understand that the quilts of Gee's Bend were meant to be used by the community. Although the quilts of Gee's Bend are now appreciated within museum walls, works do not have to be exhibited in a museum to qualify as art. Crafts and handiwork, commonly made by women and historically marginalized groups, are frequently not considered to be art. I wanted the students to understand that we can appreciate these works just as kindly as those on museum walls.The Gee's Bend tradition inspired the activity that proceeded. Because of limited resources, we did not use cloth, needles, and thread. Students cut paper into geometric shapes and created their own "quilts" through the creation of patterns. Moreover, because quilt-making is so often a communal activity, I encouraged the students to share their shapes and designs with each other.

“In the rural community of Gee's Bend, Alabama, African American women have been making quilts for generations. Taught by their mothers, grandmothers, and aunts, these women use scraps of old overalls, aprons, bleached cornmeal sacks - anything they can find. The mere scraps are then transformed into spectacular works of art, each one displaying a unique pattern with vibrant colors and complex geometric composition. Over the years, the women made quilts to keep their families warm and comfortable, never imagining that someday their work would hang on museum walls.” (Rubin, 2017)

The students made beautiful "quilts" as a community. During this lesson, I did my best to adhere to Competency 1 of the Quebec Education Program and act as a cultural facilitator. I consider this lesson interdisciplinary because of its incorporation of artistic practice, history, and community building. However, I still grapple with whether the understanding that one single lesson can instill within students can be deep enough to impact their future learning. In this way, one lesson does not simply "end" when the students are called by the bell. It is integral to draw connections between classes throughout the journey of a school year.REFERENCESRubin, S. G. (2017). The quilts of gee's bend. Abrams Books for Young Readers.Wallach, A. (2006, October 1). Fabric of Their Lives. Smithsonian Magazine. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fabric-of-their-lives-132757004/

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Qian Xun Tie

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I am currently a pre-service teacher and have worked with wonderful students ranging from the elementary to secondary level, in Canada, Hong Kong, and China.Read my Educational Philosophy.

FIELDWORK
Every year in my undergraduate degree, I had the opportunity to teach in different schools. Below are some reflections and stories:Learning History, Pattern Making, and Community Through Quilting / 1 Dec 2023
Teaching Colonialism in Africa: The Necessity of Ethics / 17 May 2024
Implementing Reading Methods: Applying English Language Arts to History / 17 May 2024
Observations: Gender Discrepancies in the Special Education Environment / 17 May 2024
Trauma-Informed Practices and Care in Risky Writing Activities / 08 Dec 2024
Interdisciplinary Methods of Preparing for Novel Studies / 11 Dec 2024
Sylvia Wynter and the American Fiction: Rethinking Multiculturalism / 12 Dec 2024

TEACHING RESOURCES
Below is an ongoing list of unit/lesson plans I have developed for my classes:SECONDARY ENGLISH
Unit Plan Passing by Nella Larsen Novel Study
Lesson Plan Ibsen, Modern China, and New Historicism
Lesson Plan Phillis Wheatley, Poetry, and the American Canon
Lesson Plan Ecofeminism in Canadian Literature
Lesson Plan Metatheatre and Jackie Sibblies Drury's FairviewARTS AND CULTURE
Lesson Plan Black Art History Lesson on the Quilts of Gee's Bend

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTBelow is an ongoing list of educational literature that inform my teaching practice:Freire, Paulo, et al. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. , Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos, 50th anniversary edition, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018.hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress : Education as the Practice of Freedom. Routledge, 1994.Kitchen, Jennifer. Critical Pedagogy and Active Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare. Cambridge University Press, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108874656.Raja, Masood A. Critical Pedagogy and Global Literature : Worldly Teaching. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137319760.Soto, Carlos. Critical Pedagogy in Hong Kong : Classroom Stories of Struggle and Hope. Routledge, 2020, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429465215.

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READING
Reading History 2023-24ESSAYS
Phantom Past, Pure Future for The Channel, McGill English Department’s Academic Journal / 13 April 2024
On Lunar New Year for MORSL Stories / 9 Feb 2024RESEARCH PROJECTS
“Am I My Own Foundation? Problematizing and Pluralizing Agency through Fanon and Césaire” at Exeter College / Summer 2024, Supervised by Dr. Jane HiddlestonCREATIVE & ART PUBLICATIONS
Trek for The Veg Literary Magazine Vol 22 / Fall 2023
Doo Wop animation for JoNine Liu / 15 Dec 2022
And Yet the Books Season 2 Flyer Design / 21 Jan 2021

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TEACHING COLONIALISM IN AFRICA: THE NECESSITY OF ETHICSBelow is a reflection on three lecture-based history lessons I facilitated at Ecole Vanguard on the topic of colonialism in Africa. This reflection has been included because it tracks an important developing point in my teaching career. It marks a point where I realized, via scholars, the necessity of ethical thinking as an objective of history class and its connection to Competency 1 of Professional Competencies required for Quebec teachers, a point which will be expanded upon in the last section of the reflection below.View Lesson PowerPoint

BIBLIOGRAPHYGetz, T. R. (2018). A primer for teaching African history : ten design principles. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822391944Giuntini, C., Green, J., Howe, E. G., Rizzo, A., Windmuller-Luna, K., LaGamma, A., Martin, P. M., Thornton, J. K., Blackmore, J., & Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.). (2015). Kongo : power and majesty. The Metropolitan Museum of Art.Ledl, T. (2017). Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Retrieved May 29, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MontrealMuseumofFineArts#/media/File:MuseumofFineArts,mainentrance,Montreal.jpg.Nwaubani, C. (2021). Retrieved May 29, 2024, from https://www.looty.art.Taiwo, O., & International African Institute. (2022). Against decolonisation : taking African agency seriously. Hurst & Company.Yahoo! News. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2024, from https://sg.news.yahoo.com/defaced-statue-belgian-colonial-king-155038870.html

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OBSERVATIONS: GENDER DISCREPANCIES IN THE SPECIAL EDUCATION ENVIRONMENT

Research indicates that girls are often underdiagnosed with learning disabilities (Fish, 2022, p.1). According to Fish (2022), special education services provide essential support, legal protections, and academic benefits for many students. However, these services can also stigmatize and isolate students from their peers, limit their access to higher-level content, and may not benefit racially marginalized students academically (p. 1). This demographic trend was evident at the special education school where I completed my second placement.For instance, I observed one Grade 8 class consisting of 12 boys and 3 girls. Although this sample size is small, I believe it reflects a well-documented trend in education. This has significant implications for students attending this school. Female students, who are often already disadvantaged in terms of teacher attention, classroom participation, and leadership roles, become further marginalized in terms of statistical representation (Rayman, 1995, p. 87-88). This was evident in many classes at the school I was placed in. In one class, I noted that during a 20-minute discussion, many boys participated while none of the girls did. This observation raises concerns about the extent to which female students with special needs benefit from the resources provided by a special education school, even in smaller classroom settings.As an educator, this issue is of particular concern to me and warrants reflection if I aim to promote equity in my teaching. Competency 7 of the Quebec Education Program requires teachers to consider student diversity. Specifically, teachers should implement inclusive teaching strategies to support the full participation and success of all students. In this context, if an educator is aware of the demographic marginalization of female students and their unique special needs, they must find effective ways to include these students in the classroom.For example, when I was teaching, I made a point to call on female students to answer questions. The questions were designed to be accessible to anyone paying attention, thereby encouraging participation and building confidence. Additionally, I checked in with female students after class to address any questions or concerns they might not have raised during class. While this was my best effort as a student teacher, I aim to create more inclusive environments in the future. I plan to consistently enforce a hand-raising policy, allow for moments of silence and reflection, and conduct regular check-ins with students. Furthermore, I will establish classroom rules based on care, respect, and space-giving to ensure that all students, especially those who are systemically more prone to be more hesitant, feel included and confident to speak up.BIBLIOGRAPHYFish R. E. (2022). Stratified medicalization of schooling difficulties. Social science & medicine (1982), 305, 115039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.115039Rayman, P. (1995). Review of Failing at Fairness: How America’s Schools Cheat Girls., by M. Sadker & D. Sadker. Contemporary Sociology, 24(1), 87–88. https://doi.org/10.2307/2075124

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IMPLEMENTING READING METHODS: APPLYING ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARTS TO HISTORYMany of the Grade 10 students are preparing to take the Quebec Ministry Exam in June. As a student-teacher, it was my responsibility to prepare them for success on this exam. My partner and I facilitated a review class to help students with the essential knowledge needed to pass the history section, which primarily focuses on Canadian history from a Quebec perspective.This task was particularly challenging for me for two reasons. First, my current teachable subject area is English Language Arts, not history, requiring me to switch subject areas. Second, as an international student, I have only taken one college course in Quebec history and have never taken the ministry exam. Therefore, I needed to both learn an unfamiliar subject area and familiarize myself with the exam format and requirements.Acknowledging my positionality, I aimed to review what I had learned in my Quebec history course, study the ministry exam structure, and leverage my strengths as an English Language Arts teacher. Over a few days, I managed to understand the key knowledge areas my students needed and the overall structure of the exam. Despite my lack of experience in history, I realized I could offer other valuable skills to help the students succeed.During a review trivia session I hosted, I emphasized test-taking skills through close reading. After the trivia game, I reviewed the correct answers with the students. Instead of reiterating facts already in their notes, I focused on helping students dissect questions that might appear similarly worded on their exams.

For example, a common question might be, "Name the current of thought associated with X," where X could be "those who supported the Boer War" or "Henri Bourassa," with answers like "imperialism" or "French-Canadian Nationalism." I highlighted this question structure and emphasized that a "current of thought" is often associated with a word ending in "ism." Other possible answers could be "socialism," "communism," or "liberalism." This close reading method helps students narrow down their answers.As an English Language Arts teacher, this lesson reminded me of the universal applicability of reading skills across disciplines, whether history, geography, or science. Having strategies for reading questions enhances students' comprehension in all subjects. I reflect on Competency 4 in the Quebec Education Program, which mandates that teachers implement teaching and learning situations appropriate to the students and the educational aims. In this case, one major educational aim was to help students succeed on their ministry exam. Thus, although I was not strictly teaching history, applying English Language Arts skills to their exam preparation helped them strategize to overcome a significant challenge in their academic journey.

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TRAUMA-INFORMED PRACTICES AND CARE IN RISKY WRITING ACTIVITIESAs a pre-service English Language Arts teacher at McGill, I was often encouraged in my academic courses to take major risks within the classroom—to enact lessons that required students to see their oppression or privilege from without and to facilitate difficult discussions as a means of developing such critical thinking. After all, those who study literature know that language, in the words of Toni Morrison, "makes meaning that secures our difference, our human difference—the way in which we are like no other life." Language is a way of understanding our collective being and history, and thus the English teacher, whose role is to teach students to read, write, and speak, desires to see traces of transformation beyond reading, writing, and speaking. Yet, how does one measure this transformation?I understood, from Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed and bell hooks' Teaching to Transgress, that risk was always going to be a part of the classroom if its goal is to empower students and dismantle power structures. Lessons that skew to the personal are "risky," yet important in their potential to enable critical thinking and self-reflectiveness. Nevertheless, the very nature of risk implies a downside and a danger of harm. Engaging in difficult and self-reflective content requires a sensitivity with pain and trauma that education courses in university only briefly address.My first encounter with trauma-informed teaching was not in any university course nor in my field work, but rather in a teaching job the summer after my first year of university. The program director, a former social worker, spoke about the impact of fear, stress, and trauma on students' ability to process and retain information. This was a situation where I had to deeply consider the impact of risks and the well-intentioned harm enacted by workers without an understanding of trauma. Often, those working in education or social welfare, motivated by a deep and urgent sense of agency and justice, find interest or even extract pleasure in reading personal confessions of students or witnessing emotional responses to their lessons, believing visible signs of vulnerability and sentimentality to be the qualitative measures of their effectiveness and success as social agents.Carello & Butler (2014) point out how, while the benefits of written emotional disclosure (WED) have been well documented, many educators misappropriate research in the classroom. WED is not without negative effects, "particularly for those experiencing moderate to severe trauma symptoms or carrying a PTSD diagnosis" (p. 161). Its positive effects may also be linked to conditions of controlled studies, where "expressive writing…is confidential and anonymous and constrained by the stipulations of human subject review boards that require participation to be entirely voluntary and provide withdrawal as an unqualified right that can be exercised without penalty," and conducted over several sessions in shorter time periods (p. 162). By contrast, "WED that occurs in classroom settings is not anonymous and may involve required coursework assignments, with failure to participate resulting in grading penalties."It is shown that educators sometimes find students' personal confessions to be more interesting than run-of-the-mill writing, and that "students are aware of this bias and believe that papers recounting events of high emotion and drama earn the highest grades" (Carello & Butler, 2014, p. 161). Unfortunately, such biases are demanding for students who already live with and face high degrees of trauma, stress, and hostilities. I connect this issue as being in conflict with Competency 13 of the Quebec Educational Program, which mandates that teachers act within the ethical principles of the profession. While my own educational principles are grounded in critical pedagogy and practice, I believe that ensuring care for students is a prerequisite of learning and the kind of practice that hooks writes about in Teaching to Transgress. Ethically, I must facilitate lessons that prioritize their well-being and resilience, even if that means that visible and immediate "transformations" do not take place.On my final days of my practicum, I thought about how I could engage in "risky" writing in a way that prioritized care and safety, while minimizing harm and emotional exploitation. Inspired by an activity introduced to me in my course "Teaching Secondary English," the lesson asked students to write a letter to their future selves. Students would write a letter addressed to themselves, seal the writing into an envelope, and have the letter returned to them at the end of the term. To avoid the risk of students disclosing information for sakes that are not their own, I decided not to assess students and allowed them to keep their writing anonymous and hidden. I also made sure to time this lesson at the end of my teaching, where I had built relationships steady enough to be trusted to safeguard their letters.

bell hooks (1994) writes to educators that "empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks" (p. 21). Prior to the activity, I wrote my own letter and shared it with the students. Reading aloud the letter, which recounted my own struggles with mental health during my adolescent years, was a physical reminder of the difficulties of reliving and sharing the past, even as a protected adult.Care work during and after the lesson was very important too. During the students' writing process, I made sure to play music that softened any tension in the room. I also wrote my own letters to each student, which they would receive after they finished writing their own letters. Each letter contained a personalized and specific note commending their positive impact in the class and encouraging their futures. It was my hope that, regardless of how they were feeling after they wrote their own letters, the letters and food they received would be a reassurance of care.It is important for me, both as an educator and as a student who has experienced the well-intentioned harms of teachers and professors, to act ethically within my profession. This means taking seriously the realities of students' lives, the penalizing structure of the school environment, and my own knowledge gaps when engaging in personal writing activities. Reading, writing, and speaking are, in my opinion, forms of literacy that can help students at our present time achieve and access more knowledge than many social institutions make possible. Visible demonstrations or evidence of transformation need not take place, witnessed, or personally collected in order for language educators to succeed in their jobs. Ethical care work—one that demonstrates respect, dignity, and trust for students—within a school allows this learning to happen.BIBLIOGRAPHYhooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. Routledge.Janice Carello MA LMSW & Lisa D. Butler PhD (2014) Potentially Perilous Pedagogies: Teaching Trauma Is Not the Same as Trauma-Informed Teaching, Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 15:2, 153-168, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2014.867571

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INTERDISCIPLINARY METHODS OF PREPARING FOR NOVEL STUDIESPreparing students to engage with a novel, and to stay engaged throughout a novel, can be a challenge. However, in many other ways, a novel studies' length is an opportunity for students to explore the book in all its different dimensions.The novel selected for the Secondary 3 students was John Steinbeck’s The Pearl. To prepare for the study, I considered different levels of interests students may have and how that might be a starting point to reading this book. Drawing multiple articles from the internet, I prepared students to read about authorial background, history, ethics, science, and geography related to this novel. I located five articles—on John Steinbeck, the Gold Rush, discrimination, pearl formation, and La Paz—from the internet and thought of them as starting points.In groups, students read and discussed the articles, compiling their main points onto a mini-poster. Later, students were tasked to present their learnings to the class as experts. In the end, the mini-posters were assembled into a larger collage that formed a basis and foundation for the class’ reading of The Pearl.Competency 4 of the Quebec Education Program instigates that teachers plan teaching and learning situations. Interdisciplinary ways of introducing topics open ways that students can engage with course topics and allow for more freedom. Moreover, this prepared students for reading and understanding the novel as it built upon the knowledge learned from the articles. For example, because students learned about John Steinbeck and the Gold Rush, they were quick to identify themes such as the American Dream and American nationalism even while the story was set in Mexico. This also allowed me to introduce knowledge typically learned in science classrooms in future lessons as a way of understanding the novel. Specifically, I spent one lesson on the metaphor of colonial animals in the novel, where students explored how superorganisms were structured in order to better understand the novel.In the future, I plan to continue seeing introductory lessons as fundamental in their openness and ability to draw students in from multiple interests.

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SYLVIA WYNTER AND THE AMERICAN FICTION: RETHINKING MULTICULTURALISMI was introduced to the theorist Sylvia Wynter during the book launch of Dr. Camille Owens, the Assistant Professor at the Department of English. Professor Owens’ Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America is a work of literary, cultural, and historical scholarship recentering the figure of the black child prodigy during antebellum America. After reading this book, I began learning about other thinkers and works that were referenced in or related to the book.Sylvia Wynter was a crucial figure in my reading. One work that specifically pushed me to reflect on education was her “‘Do Not Call Us Negros’: How ‘Multicultural’ Textbooks Perpetuate Racism.’” In the book, Wynter argues that the multicultural model of education, which to many is a palatable and attractive alternative to the White Euro-centric form of education, nevertheless upholds the status quo of overrepresenting Man—the biogenetic rational citizen-subject—as the center of life. Speaking in the context of the United States, Wynter argues that the model works to legitimize what she calls the “American fiction”: a national identity that envisions itself as a horizontal nation of immigrants at the expense of erasing the lived history of non-immigrant Indigenous and captured Black people. Under this episteme where “ethnicity replaces alterity,” Indigenous and Black people are reframed as “ethnic strands” of the same American Immigrant story, and the central node of White purity is maintained (Wynter, 1990, p. 40).Even within a Canadian context, Wynter’s work forces us to think critically about how curriculum and school practices in North America as a settler-continent reflect a similar ideology of multiculturalism and a similar national origin story. As a part of this world, how many teachers, even as they attempt to incorporate diverse literatures, nevertheless still perpetuate this North American fiction?Competency 11 of the Quebec Education Program instigates that educators commit to one’s professional development. I am grateful for being able to attend Professor Owens’ book launch and to read Wynter, because they have both in many ways inspired and pushed me to critically examine textbooks, curriculums, and educational resources as cultural objects in themselves. Undoubtedly, it has made me a lot more pessimistic, but in the same vein, more pragmatic and careful. Expelling the haze of multicultural optimism, I am reminded that, however important, recentering Black and Indigenous life-worlds and decolonizing education requires much more than updating reading lists.An open online resource that has also been extremely helpful for my learning and reflection is Black Feminist Pedagogies.WORKS CITED
Wynter, S. (1990). Do not call us negros : how “multicultural” textbooks perpetuate racism. Aspire.

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Books I read in whole make it onto the lists. I retrospectively pick a theme and an artwork, for fun.

2024
Theme: Being Modern

• Roughly Fiction

• Seasons of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih

• School Days by Patrick Chamoiseau

• A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen

• Quicksand by Nella Larsen

• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

• A Tempest by Aime Cesaire

• The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

• Swing Time by Zadie Smith

• On Beauty by Zadie Smith

• The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li

• Ways of Dying by Zakes Mda

• You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town by Zoe Wicomb

• Mine Boy by Peter Abrahams

• Tell Freedom: Memories of Africa by Peter Abarahams

• Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

• Foe by J.M. Coetzee

• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

• Fences by August Wilson

• The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

• Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller

• The Pearl by John Steinbeck

• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler

• Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise by Lin Yi-Han, Translated by Jenna Tang

• 《流俗地》 — 黎紫书

• 《野猪渡河》 — 张贵兴

• 《公务员笔记》— 王晓方

• Roughly Non-fiction

• The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin

• Orientalism by Edward Said

• On Women by Susan Sontag

• Agency and Embodiment by Carrie Noland

• Frantz Fanon: Literature and Invention by Jane Hiddlston

• Frantz Fanon: Psychiatry and Politics by Nigel Gibson

• Theory of the Novel by Georg Lukacs

• The African Image by Ezekiel Mphahlele

• Like Children: Black Prodigy and the Measure of the Human in America by Camille Owens

• Christian Missionaries, Ethnicity, and State Control in Globalized Yunnan by Gideon Elazar

• Nordic Orientalism: Paris and the Cosmopolitan Imagination 1800-1900 by Elisabeth Oxfeldt

• Against Decolonization: Taking African Agency Seriously by Olufemi Taiwo

• The Collected Schizoprenias by Esme Weijun Wang

• Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon

• The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon

• 《季风之北，彩云之南》— 杨斌

• 《五四婚姻》— 张慧怡

2023
Theme: Big Writers